Thursday, August 9, 2012

Chips, a poem by Jenny Walker.

Post 666 - Here's a winner from the Foyle's Young Poets of the Year Award, 2011.

Chips by Jenny Walker

It is our night, so we buy chips
and grin guiltily over the greasy wrapper
at each other, crumpling yesterday's paper in our
sticky, unharnessed hands.
We are fools for love and salt
and we see that it is good.

Our feet scatter stars in the inky black,
with the click-clack clatter that's classed
so coolly cosmopolitan these days.
They have lit up all the lights for us,
for our arms and lips and eyes wide open
to drink it all in. But,

bending at the waist at the pavement's gutter,
clutching each other on the dark street corner -
Sudden vertiginous precision
finds the old woman with the cataract vision,
cramming the memories into her mouth in
salty handfuls and smacking her lips.

Jenny is 17 and from Cumbria, and is just starting at Edinburgh University studying English Literature. She has always been interested in writing but only became serious about writing poetry in the last few years. Jenny enjoys playing the piano, cloud watching, reading, and talking at length about all these things. She was a runner up in the Anne Pierson Award in 2010.